Aristotle
Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist , one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking. Some of his most notable works include Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Poetics and Prior Analytics. As a prolific writer and polymath, Aristotle radically transformed most, if not all, areas of knowledge he touched. Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology. It is no wonder that Aquinas referred to him simply as "The Philosopher." In his lifetime, Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive. Unfortunately for us, these works are in the form of lecture notes and draft manuscripts never intended for general readership, so they do not demonstrate his reputed polished prose style which attracted many great followers, including the Roman Cicero. Aristotle was the first to classify areas of human knowledge into distinct disciplines such as mathematics, biology, and ethics. Some of these classifications are still used today. Life Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III(reigned c. 393–c. 370 BCE), king of Macedonia and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323 BCE). After his father’s death in 367, At age 17 his guardian, Proxenus, sent him to Athens, the intellectual center of the world, to complete his education, where he enrolled in Plato’s Academy. He remained there for 20 years as Plato’s pupil and colleague. The Academy In the later years of his association with Plato and the Academy he began to lecture on his own account, and of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy especially on the subject of rhetoric. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence. At the death of Plato in 347, the pre-eminent ability of Aristotle would seem to have designated him to succeed to the leadership of the Academy. But his divergence from Plato's teaching was too great to make this possible, and Plato's nephew Speusippus was chosen instead. Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines. Already, however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, or Ideas (eidos.) (The word Form, when used to refer to Forms as Plato conceived them, is often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived them, it is conventionally lowercased.) Upon the death of Philip, Alexander succeeded to the kingship and prepared for his subsequent conquests. Aristotle's work being finished, he returned to Athens, which he had not visited since the death of Plato. He found the Platonic school flourishing under Xenocrates, and Platonism the dominant philosophy of Athens. He thus set up his own school at a place called the Lyceum. For the next thirteen years he devoted his energies to his teaching and composing his philosophical treatises. He is said to have given two kinds of lectures: the more detailed discussions in the morning for an inner circle of advanced students, and the popular discourses in the evening for the general body of lovers of knowledge. When teaching at the Lyceum, Aristotle had a habit of walking about as he discoursed. It was in connection with this that his followers became known in later years as the peripatetics, meaning "to walk about." The Lyceum While Alexander was conquering Asia, Aristotle, now 50 years old, just outside the city boundary, he established his own school in a gymnasium known as the Lyceum. He built a substantial library and gathered around him a group of brilliant research students, called “peripatetics” from the name of the cloister (peripatos) in which they walked and held their discussions. The Lyceum was not a private club like the Academy; many of the lectures there were open to the general public and given free of charge. Aristotle divided the sciences into three kinds: productive, practical, and theoretical. The productive sciences, naturally enough, are those that have a product. They include not only engineering and architecture, which have products like bridges and houses, but also disciplines such as strategy and rhetoric, where the product is something less concrete, such as victory on the battlefield or in the courts. The practical sciences, most notably ethics and politics, are those that guide behaviour. The theoretical sciences—physics, mathematics, and theology—are those that have no product and no practical goal but in which information and understanding are sought for their own sake. During Aristotle’s years at the Lyceum, his relationship with his former pupil Alexander apparently cooled. Alexander became more and more megalomaniac, finally proclaiming himself divine and demanding that Greeks prostrate themselves before him in adoration. Opposition to this demand was led by Aristotle’s nephew Callisthenes (c. 360–327 BCE), who had been appointed historian of Alexander’s Asiatic expedition on Aristotle’s recommendation. For his heroism Callisthenes was falsely implicated in a plot and executed. At the sudden death of Alexander in 323 BCE., the pro-Macedonian government in Athens was overthrown, Athens became uncomfortable for Macedonians, even those who were anti-imperialist. A charge of impiety was trumped up against him and to escape prosecution he fled to Chalcis in Euboea saying that he did not wish the city that had executed Socrates “to sin twice against philosophy,” Aristotle fled to Chalcis and In the first year of his residence at Chalcis he complained of a stomach illness and died in 322 BCE. Having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.